Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Headlines- Wednesday January 25

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Magic panties enthusiast Willard Romney released his taxes last night: his effective tax rate is 13.9% and he made $42M+ over the last two years. Oh, yeah: he created zero jobs. (Think Progress)

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Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans — along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney — were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes. Uh-huh. So when Willard ran in 2008, they thought it was no big deal? (NYTimes)

In Texas, investigators are demanding answers from Dallas meat-packing company Columbia Packing Company after photos appeared to show the company dumping pig blood into the Trinity River. The case raises some interesting legal questions. Keep reading here.

The tax returns for Mitt Romney's charitable foundation reveal that the GOP presidential hopeful has given at least $35,000 in recent years to groups actively working to halt the spread of LGBT equality and, in some cases, intentionally demonize LGBT people. The revelation comes two weeks after Romney said in New Hampshire that he opposed discrimination against LGBT Americans. But according to CNN, Romney donated to the extremist group Massachusetts Family Institute, as well as the Becket Fund. The Massachusetts Family Institute received $10,000 from Romney in 2006, while the Beckett Fund received $25,000 in 2009. The donations came from the Tyler Charitable Foundation, set up and funded by the Romneys.

"This is just another example of Mitt Romney saying one thing while doing the complete opposite. It's crystal clear that while Governor Romney claims to oppose discrimination, he is beholden to groups who make it their mission to vilify LGBT people," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "Romney's financial support of extremist groups is indicative of a politician with rising national ambitions who knew he had to cozy up to those on the far-right in order to secure his party's nomination."

Among their many anti-gay agenda items, the Massachusetts Family Institute, you may recall, opposes efforts to reduce anti-gay bullying. They also advocate for destructive "reparative therapy."

RELATED: Romney also donated millions to the Mormon Church, which was one of the two primary institutional backers of Proposition 8. We've not yet learned how much, if any, of Romney's money was meant to support Prop 8.

Politifact—the self-anointed fact checkers—grade this statement from the President speech tonight as "half-true:"

"In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005."

This is not half true or two-thirds true. It is just true.

So why, I ask you, why do they go where they go? Because of this:

In his remarks, Obama described the damage to the economy, including losing millions of jobs "before our policies were in full effect." Then he describe [sic!] the subsequent job increases, essentially taking credit for the job growth. But labor economists tell us that no mayor or governor or president deserves all the claim or all the credit for changes in employment.

Really? That's it? That makes the fact not a fact? I've seen some very useful work by these folks, but between this and this, Politifact just can't be trusted. Full stop.

Three million jobs were created, but according to the "fact-checkers," they don't exist because… Well, I have no idea.

Straight up pathetic. Those jobs were created, they were created under Obama's time in office. It's that simple. It's 100% true. Nothing about the statement that three million jobs being created in 22 months is inaccurate- he never even claimed he created them.

That's four hundred thousand dollars a week. No wonder he thought that his speaking fees weren't "much money". In comparison, if you made thirty grand a year and you had a side job where you took in an extra six hundred dollars: That would be comparable to the scale of Romney's little side work.

I suspect that anyone who believes that Mitt the Ripper cares about middle class Americans, let alone the working poor, probably needs to have their head examined.

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Dinosaur News of the Week "A nesting site for dinosaur eggs found in South Africa is 100 million years older than the previous oldest site. Palaeontologists found 10 separate nests, each containing clutches of up to 34 eggs measuring 6-7cm. The fossils are of the prosauropod Massospondylus, a relative of the long-necked sauropods such as Diplodocus. They suggest that Massospondylus returned to the site repeatedly, laying their eggs in groups in the earliest-known case of "colonial nesting". The 190-million-year-old finds also included embryonic dinosaur skeletons, and are described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They were found in a 25m stretch of rock in South Africa's Golden Gate Highlands National Park. The researchers suggest that many more sites remain embedded in the rock, which will be exposed as natural weathering processes continue. But the current find already vastly extends what is known about dinosaurs in their earliest days on Earth. "Even though the fossil record of dinosaurs is extensive, we actually have very little fossil information about their reproductive biology, particularly for early dinosaurs," said David Evans, associate curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum. "This amazing series of 190-million-year-old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record." "

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A terrible documentary film called "The Third Jihad," allegedly bestowed upon the New York Police Department by someone at the Department of Homeland Security, was used to "train" new policepersons, was apparently put "on a continuous loop" at NYPD HQ, and was viewed by nearly 1,500 officers in total during its run, which began in 2010. The film was created by the Clarion Fund, which put out another awful anti-Muslim film called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" prior to the 2008 election. The new one is filled with similarly violent imagery like deadly shootings and car bombs, and depicts an Islamic flag flying at the White House. "This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America," a voiceover says. "A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America." READ MORE »